By Rights We Should Have To Play There

The University of Michigan football program will open the 2014 season with a match-up against Appalachian State University on Aug. 30 at Michigan Stadium. This will be the second [sic] meeting between the Wolverines and Mountaineers at Michigan Stadium.

Sorry about that error in the second sentence above. Michigan has never played Appalachian State.

I don't want Michigan to ever be as huge an underdog as App State was that day. I want to be the favorite. Even if it means occasionally being the butt of jokes when we lose, it's still a sign of respect.

I think we should call the Big Ten and cancel the game with OSU. Because they'll spend all week talking about how we haven't beaten them in so long, and I don't think I can handle it if we lose again. Come to think of it, Brandon needs to make sure we don't play Sparty again, because if they win 4 in a row, I don't know if I'll survive another year of the Michigan media. Can we just do like T-Ball, and not keep score, and everyone plays?

When did we go from a Country that could win two world wars to one that has a hissy fit over FCS football teams?

I say we go with 2007. Henne, Hart, Long -- man, that team was loaded, and they came out of the gate like a house on fire! Plus, it would be a great tribute to Lloyd's last, magical year. Brandon's gonna be able to market the bejeesus out of this one!

If they need money, they can play dozens of other FBS schools that need to fill in a September home date. They are at the top of the FCS/beginner FBS food chain.

The win over Michigan put them on the national map. I work with a guy from App State. I didn't even know it until after the Horror. He said he was always ashamed to say he was from a school called "Appalachain State". But not so after they beat us. Today he says with pride he's from Appalachain State. It's still the same isolated podunk school with a bad video and a worse name.

It cannot be understated how much that victory meant to them and how it completely redefined them. Why pop the bubble by getting pounded on national television and reminding everyone that all you really did was catch a superior team sleepwalking in its season opener?

Many people are questioning why people are so upset about scheduling Appalachian State when their team is cupcake-caliber. Here's my reasons:

1) Bad publicity surrounding the game. There's no reason why Michigan should be encouraging the MSM and rivals to recall that god-awful game that happened 4 years ago. Seriously. None. It's even theoretically possible that publicity of this game negatively affects recruiting (a long shot, but recruiting is finnicky as it is). Publicity of the results of the game can't be good either, since winning this game by 200 points will still bring back memories of 2007.

2) Scheduling a cupcake game 3 years in advance. Any guesses as to how many cupcake games are currently scheduled for the 2013 game? ZERO. That's right; it's more important for the football team to schedule a 2014 Appalachian State game than it is to fill out the 2013 schedule or the last game in 2012. The only rationale that Appalachian State gets scheduled this early is because Michigan wants a rematch of this game after feeling sore the first time around.

This sends a message to the world that goes against everything that Hoke stands for.

The only way for Michigan to claim superiority, "be Michigan," and "get it" is if Michigan treats every cupcake game the same, whether they have won or lost to them. That means all cupcakes are to come into the Big House to receive a paycheck and get their asses kicked. That's it. Regardless of what happened in the past. This sort of special treatment is exactly what a team like Appalachian State wants to obtain from Michigan: public recognition that their team should be respected. If Michigan wants to be Michigan, this game doesn't get scheduled until it got scheduled for the 2007 season, which was like 4-5 months before kickoff.

Good. There was some jerk at the Y in downtown A2 who used to wear his ASU shirt with gold chains when he curled 25 lbs with workout gloves. Looking forward to metaphorically wiping that smirk off his face.

Same local sample, but it seems most people like it or don't care, and the whine factor is small, though apparently loud. At least around here. I wonder if the Blog's Emo take on everything attracts the small emo/football fan segment. Or, more likely, I wonder if it has something to do with the age of the person. If THE HORROR is one of your only, or main memories of Michigan, and you have mainly experienced the last half decade, give or take, that you've just lost all confidence in Michigan and it's more something you don't want to relive. And if you're a bit older, you're more confident in Michigan being Michigan, and not dodging anyone because people might say things that hurt our feelings. Or that we might, gulp, lose.

They are obviously not as good as the team we faced in 2007 and unless they run off an impressive streak of 2 or 3 championships prior to the game, they won't be in the future. Then due to the embarrassment that Michigan has taken from the last game, Michigan will run up the score (to 100 points if they can) to attempt to overcome said embarrassment. Michigan gets nothing from this except for the view of being the bigger kid that got pissed off from the lucky punch given by the weaker kid, then came back for revenge.

Colorado finished 5-6 that year and then coach Rick Neuheisel left for UW and Gary Barnett came to town.

There was a lot of hype though for the UM-CU game in 1997 because CU had finished 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2 the previous 3 years and there was sensationalization of the 1994 hail-mary play in Michigan Stadium, yaddayadd

Michigan got a lot of cred for that win, but in hindsight Colorado wasn't a good team.

To give you an idea about how bad they were, CU barely defeated a 1-10 Iowa State team 43-38 in Ames and defeated a 7-6 Wyoming squad by 1 pt. By CU football standards of the time (3 years removed from McCartney), that team stunk.

Let's get the old gang back together again. We can have Llloyd flip the coin, so he will have another 50% chance of getting things right. Then we have have all the 2007 players come out on the field. Hopefully they will not start crying again like the last time they saw those uniforms. I might be wrong about the crying thing during the game but I know there was crying after the game. I remember during the game those great Michigan Men were running all over the field like chickens with their heads cut off. They just couldn't keep up with or catch those skinny little players running that sissy, cowardly spread offense. These great Michigan Men gave us the worst lose in football history and they some how think they are entitled to dictate how our Athletic Dept. is run. Well guess what. You lost that right when you walked on that field in 2007 and thought because of who you were everyone would bow down to you. So you have no rights to talk. Besides the money I've spent over the last 40 years supporting UM is just as much as you have contributed.